


Bring Back Yesterday

by Brinny



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Imagine your OTP, Past Jo Harvelle/Dean Winchester, Reunions, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 19:32:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16435451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brinny/pseuds/Brinny
Summary: Jo doesn’t count the years or months or days.If she did count, it would be just over three years. If she did count, it would be about 40 months. If she did count, it would be exactly one thousand two hundred twenty three days.But Jo doesn’t count.





	Bring Back Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> One of those fics that was posted _EONS_ ago. So, if it's familiar, that be why.

Jo doesn’t count the years or months or days.  
  
If she did count, it would be just over three years. If she did count, it would be about 40 months. If she did count, it would be exactly one thousand two hundred twenty three days.  
  
But Jo doesn’t count.  
  


\---

  
  
She waits inside the bar.   
  
Other than two old men sitting in the back corner, both wearing stained trucker hats with their heads bowed together, she’s the only one here drinking before noon. Jo alternates between keeping her eyes on the front door and watching one of the men drag his hands over the chips in the table as the two of them whisper to each other in between slow sips of whiskey.   
  
She orders herself a beer, whatever they have on tap.   
  
Jo has grown up to be agreeable, all _yes ma’am_  and _no sir_ and _please_  and  _thank you_  and big, bright smiles. She thinks that Dean probably won’t remember how she used to be, but figures it fair because she forgets things about him too.   
  
Sometimes, she spends nights beneath scratchy motel sheets and tries to remember his face. She tries to remember if his nose slopes down or if his freckles lazily trail past his cheeks and up to his ears. She never gets it quite right, everything always ends up just a little bit fuzzy, but her belly still feels aching and warm and in between her thighs still turns hot and sticky. She flushes at the memory and quickly ties her hair up and off of her neck.  
  
Taking a sip of her beer, Jo shifts her eyes from the old men and back to the front door. Whatever they have on tap turns out to be a bit more bitter than she’s used to and she holds it uncomfortably in her mouth before she swallows, the thick foam curling around her tongue. Licking her lips, she carefully sets the beer on the bar, the cold glass slip-sliding beneath her fingers.    

He’s late. 

He’s always late.

Dean has worn a broken watch since he was sixteen, a birthday gift from his dad, some old family heirloom that no one has ever bothered to get fixed. Secretly, Jo thinks that he likes the easy excuse. Every time he’s late and every time he just gives an apologetic grin and holds up his wrist as if to say,  _damn thing doesn’t keep time_.

Of course, Dean would make her wait ten seconds or ten minutes or ten hours, just because he knows that she would.  
  
He’s always late and she’s always waiting.   
  
When he does finally walk through the door, he throws his hand up in a wave and points at the watch that slowly slides down his arm. The corners of his mouth turn up in an apology and, just like that, he’s forgiven. Jo smiles back as Dean makes his way over to her, his head ducking low and his lips pressing to her neck.  
  
“Hey, kid.”  
  
“Hi.”  
  
Jo’s not sure if he’s ever said her name out loud. She’s not sure if he’s ever stretched his lips low and wide around the one small syllable. It’s always  _kid_  and  _girl_. And sometimes, if he’s drunk enough or tired enough, he calls her  _sweetheart_ and  _baby_ , condescending and crass.    
  
Sliding onto the barstool next to her, he looks down at her half-empty glass of beer, and then looks back up at her, confused. Jo pushes the glass back and forth across the countertop, leaving behind a sluggish trail of condensation, but Dean keeps looking and she can feel her cheeks burn pink under his gaze.

“What?” she asks.    
  
“You drink now?” His mouth settles into a smirk and with a quirk of his brow, he adds, “You old enough to drink?”  
  
“Yeah,” she says, and then takes a small sip as if she has to prove that she’s not lying. “For awhile now.”  
  
“Huh,” he remarks. “The things you miss when you go away. You know, we should celebrate.”  
  
Jo laughs. “It was a couple of years ago.”  
  
“Well, better late than never.”

And Jo thinks that just might be the most honest thing to ever come out of his mouth.

“Sure,” she agrees. “Let’s celebrate.”

With a raise of his hand, Dean catches the bartender’s attention and points to Jo’s glass, signalling his order. When it arrives, he takes a long and slow swallow, draining the glass by half. Then, almost as an afterthought, he tips his glass against hers, clanking them together.

“To the girl who is old enough to drink,” he says through a grin. “So, you grew up, huh?”  
  
“Yep. Happens that way sometimes.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, nodding his head in agreement. “Kinda sucks though, huh? Getting older?”  
  
“It’s okay.” 

“Well, I hate it.” 

Jo sort of _hmms_ in response, then reaches up to touch his face, pushing her fingertips over the bridge of his nose (it doesn’t slope down at all) and across his cheeks (full of faint freckles up to his ears). And then, thoroughly embarrassed, she drops her hand and quickly tugs the elastic out of her hair and slides it back around her wrist, hiding behind the messy curls that limply fall around her face. 

She smiles, shyly, with her thumb thoughtfully tucked between her teeth.

“You stayed the same, I think.”   
  
Dean finishes his beer with another long swallow, tipping his chin back as he drains the glass, before wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. He grins. “Happens that way sometimes.”  
 

  
\--- 

  
Dean likes the way she looks in his car. He always has.  
  
When she was younger, she used to sit in the backseat with her knees curled up to her chest and her chin in her hands as she stared out the dirty and dusty windows. Now, she sits beside him, with one foot tucked beneath her and the other pressed up on the dash, her fingers twisting over the radio knobs. She lands on something soft and bluesy and then with a quick stretch of her arms, she settles back into the seat and hums along.  
  
“I missed the road,” she says. And then, hiding a smile behind a loosely curled fist, she glances over at him and adds, “I missed you. And Sam, too.”  
  
“Well, Sammy is pretty happy to be seeing you.”  
  
“And what about you?”  
  
Dean studies her from the corner of his eye.  

When Jo was younger, when she sat in the back seat with her knees curled up and her chin in her hands, she used to scowl at him and she used to kiss his brother and she used to fight with her mom. She was always a bit of a spitfire, he thinks. From a wide-eyed and pigtailed schoolgirl to an angry and pouting teenager to now, she was always a little bit of trouble. 

And, if he’s being honest, she grew up pretty: pink cheeks and long lashes and blonde curls. Or maybe that’s who Jo always was.

“Dean?” she prompts over the sudden silence that accompanied his staring. “Are you happy to see me?”  
  
“Always happy to see you, kid,” he tells her. Flashing her a wide grin, he reaches over and holds his hand over her wrist, fingers and thumb rubbing slow circles over the soft skin there. “Maybe next time you won’t take so damn long to call me.”  
  
“Maybe next time you won’t leave in the middle of the night.”  
  
Dean moves his fingers further up her arm, slowly dragging his knuckles along the inside of her elbow, and then up to her neck, before loosely cupping his hand around her cheek.

“Yeah. Maybe next time.”  
  
And then he puts both of his hands back at ten and two on the wheel and looks out at the road, only quickly glancing her way when she tugs both legs up onto the seat and leans her head against the window, her eyes closing. He can hear her sigh.  
  
“Or maybe next time there won’t be a next time,” she says, her mouth stretching into a yawn.  
  
Dean laughs and Jo smiles sleepily.

He always liked how she looks in his car.  

\---  


Sam misses her. 

And Sam loves her and thinks about her, but mostly, Sam just misses her.

He misses the slow drifting of her fingertips, tickling over his cheek and searching the outline of his lips. He misses lazy mornings with his mouth on hers, how he would tangle his hands in her hair and pull her closer.

He even misses the way he used to miss her, miss when she wasn’t in his bed and he couldn’t feel the steady beat of her heart or hear the soft sound of her breathing.    
  
(And he misses the way that she used to miss him too, with happy and warm kisses and silly smiles.)

When Dean opens the door to the motel room, Sam literally jumps up to greet them. Jo waves from the doorway and Dean’s hands loosely grab onto her shoulders, as if he’s about to spin her around prettily, show her off, like a prize.

And Sam wants to run over and pick her up and swing her around, but he doesn’t think that’s something they do anymore, so he just grins at the two of them, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. 

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says, “Look what the cat dragged in.”  
  
And Sam grins even wider, because, man, he really does miss her.  
  
“Hi, Jo,” Sam says.

Jo takes a step towards him, putting her hands on his chest as she reaches up on tiptoe to press a quick kiss to his cheek. He can feel his face flush, but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind, because she just smiles up at him.  
  
“I always forget how tall you are,” she says, putting her feet back on the floor and hooking two fingers into his belt loop, pulling him just a little bit closer until the toes of their shoes touch. She narrows her eyes, suspiciously. “Sure you don’t just keep growing?”  
  
“Yeah, pretty sure.”  
  
“Well,” she says, smiling, “Maybe I’m just smaller.”  
  
Sam misses how it felt to love her. He misses how it felt to hold her hand, he misses how it felt when she kissed him, and he misses how it felt to be inside of her.

Tugging a hand out of his pocket, he curls his fingers around hers.  
  
“Nah, same old Jo.”

\---

 

Sam and Jo stay behind when Dean leaves to go pick up dinner.

They sit quietly on the bed, side-by-side, Sam with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fist while Jo stares at her hands in her lap.

Jo used to spend hours with him in empty motel rooms: hours of waiting and hours of talking and hours of her mouth on his and his mouth on hers. Hours of just Sam and Jo.

Dean changed all of that. It’s different now. They’re different now.

“He’s late,” Sam says.  

Jo starts at the sound of his voice. He sounds a lot quieter than she remembers. Maybe she’s forgotten things about him too, she thinks. But when she turns to look at him, he’s exactly as she remembered: all boyishly handsome with his mouth set in a sad smile and his brow in a serious furrow.

His hair is longer though, she notes, the ends curling up at the collar of his shirt and beneath his jaw. She has the sudden urge to touch it, to push the soft curls off of his forehead and behind his ears, to kiss his lips after she does; but when she reaches up, Sam quickly catches her wrist in his hand.

“You grew it out. It’s nice,” she says, shoulders up in a small shrug. “I like it.”

Sam holds his thumb against her palm, resting his fingers against hers until she knots them together. 

“I missed you,” he confesses.

“Me too.”

“You didn’t have to leave,” he says. “Not just because Dean did. It could have just been you and me.”

 _Hours of Sam and Jo_ , she thinks, catching her head in a nod. But what she says is, “You know that I did.”

She wonders if maybe he didn’t know. Would he still miss her if he did?

“Well, you’re back now,” he says, unsure. He touches his free hand to her cheek and asks, “Can I kiss you?”

And Jo, agreeable and all _yes ma’am_ and _no sir_ , smiles big and bright and says, “Yes, please. Thank you.” 

So Sam presses his mouth to hers and tangles his hands in her hair to pull her closer.

 

\---

_(She rides him slowly, keeping her hands held on his shoulders as she moves up and down over him and he lazily (sweetly, even) mouths at her neck._

_“Do you love me?”_

_He grins up at her, kind of earnestly happy, and then catches her lips in a sudden kiss._

_“Always, kid.”)_

 

 

\---

 

Jo wishes that time could stand still, like Dean’s broken watch. 

Instead, she kisses Sam and starts counting.

 


End file.
